All posts tagged Fargo

The 72nd annual Golden Globe Awards are under way at the Beverly Hills Hilton in Los Angeles. Tina Fey and Amy Poehlerdelivered a hilarious opening monologue. Amazon got their first-ever win with their series “Transparent.” And Gina Rodriguez made a splash with her win for freshman comedy “Jane the Virgin.” Here’s a list of the complete winners in bold, updated throughout the night. Read More »

The 72nd annual Golden Globe Awards gets under way tonight at 8 p.m. at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosting for the third consecutive year. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association will dole out 21 awards over the course of three hours (or more). Many of the categories present very interesting match ups, with great performances, movies and TV being honored. Click through for five things to watch for tonight. Read More »

FX announced today that the follow-up to the acclaimed series has cast Ted Danson (“CSI”), Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation”), Patrick Wilson (“Angels in America”), Jean Smart (“Frasier”) and Brad Garrett (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) for the second series.

They’ll join previous announced leads Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemmons (“Breaking Bad”) who play a married couple that likely get mixed-up into a “Fargo”-eque entanglement – which is never a good thing. Read More »

On the heels of its Golden Globe nominations – for Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, as well as one for Frances O’Connor in the Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television category – Starz‘s limited series “The Missing” has been renewed for a second installment.

Like its similarly structured contemporaries “True Detective” and “Fargo,” the sequel (which is the term Starz is using, as opposed to “second season”) to “The Missing” will focus on a new case, new characters and a new location. It will however, as in the first installment, be written by brothers Harry and Jack Williams and unfold over two different time frames. Read More »

On the heels of Billy Bob Thornton‘s SAG Award nomination for his role as the shameless, silently frightening mass-murderer Lorne Malvo in FX’s adaptation of “Fargo,” the cable network announced yesterday the casting of two starring roles for the second installment of the series.

Kirsten Dunst (“Melancholia”) and Jesse Plemons (“Breaking Bad”) will be heading off to the snowy wilds of 1979 Sioux Falls, S.D., and Luverne, Minn., via Calgary, Alberta (where the first season was also shot), as husband and wife Peggy and Ed Blomquist.

According to FX, Dunst’s character is a “small-town beautician with big city dreams who is trying to figure out who she really is and what she wants as she struggles with traditional societal expectations.” Plemons’ Ed is “a butcher’s assistant who wants to be supportive of his wife’s self-discovery, even if he doesn’t quite understand it.” Read More »

If you were skeptical of a TV adaptation of the Coen Brothers 1996 film “Fargo,” it’s understandable. Rarely do those things work out and rarely do they work out 15-plus years after the film hit theaters. But Noah Hawley’s adaptation, which set a new story in the “Fargo” world 10 years after the film’s events were depicted, was an instant gem. The 10 episodes were intricate and faithful to the Coen’s style, with every character feeling authentic to that world. Allison Tolman’s portrayal of the show’s hero Molly Solverson was superb, as was Martin Freeman as Lester Nygaard and Bob Odenkirk as the inept cop Sheriff Bill Oswalt.

But it was Billy Bob Thornton’s compelling portrayal of the show’s antagonist, Lorne Malvo, that kept us up at night, for many different reasons. He was funny, terrifying, sadistic, and oddly normal – often times in every scene he appeared in.

“Joel and Ethan have described that area [of the country] as Siberia with family restaurants,” Hawley says. “When a man puts on his mukluks, goes out into the wilderness, what does he bring back with him? What he brings back with him is Lorne Malvo. It’s this idea of a man who has some elemental qualities about him. There are these larger-than-life figures that feel like they’ve existed in the American landscape forever.” Read More »

Finales are a tricky thing for “Manhattan.” The cable drama is about the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, N.M., after all, and is building toward the most destructive act in human history.

For fans of the show, there has also been reason for wariness. Despite largely positive reviews, “Manhattan” has struggled in the ratings, drawing an average of 1.2 million viewers (including DVR viewings up to seven days after episodes air). It has also had a hard time claiming its share of buzz at a time when the zeitgeist is packed with prestige cable and Internet shows, from “Fargo” to “Outlanders” to “Orange is the New Black” and “Transparent.”

Looking to build excitement ahead of the season finale that airs this Sunday, creator Sam Shaw and director Thomas Schlamme talked with Speakeasy about the season so far and where it may be going. This interview took place before WGN announced it has renewed “Manhattan.”

Click through for the interview and a video clip from the show. Read More »

Looking for a favorite new TV show? The Emmys, which aired Monday night, can be viewed as a crib sheet for binge-watchers, teeing up a list of potential high-quality candidates. Of course, “Modern Family” and “Breaking Bad” aren’t exactly obscure, but “Mom,” “Fargo” and “Sherlock” have yet to attract such a dedicated following. Here is a list of where you can watch the winning shows and how much time it would take to watch each and every episode. Read More »

You betcha FX Networks is bringing “Fargo” back for another season after the first one racked up 18 Emmy nominations.

The series, inspired by the Oscar-winning Coen brothers classic of the same name, will return with a 10-episode season featuring an “all-new cast of characters, a new time period and a new ‘true crime’ story,” FX said in a release. New time period, you say? FX didn’t say much more than that, although Hitfix’s Alan Sepinwall speculates that the new story might have something to do with the Sioux Falls case that Keith Carradine’s character kept referencing.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.